Chelsea Newbold

Chelsea Newbold received their MS in Plant Pathology in 2021 from Oregon State University, BS in Ecology, Evolutionary, and Organismal Biology in 2018 from California State University Monterey Bay, and their AA in the Natural Sciences in 2015 from Pasadena City College. Chelsea has been an active member of the American Phytopathological Society (APS) since 2017 and has presented numerous posters and oral presentations at both national and regional society meetings. Notably in June 2021 they placed third in the APS Pacific Division Graduate Oral Presentation Competition for their talk on the fitness costs associated with QoI/FRAC 11 fungicide resistance in the grape powdery mildew fungus, Erysiphe necator. Chelsea also serves APS leadership as the 2021-2022 vice Chair of the Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (CDEI). Chelsea has also served on departmental and college wide DEI committees at Oregon State University's Department of Botany and Plant Pathology as well as the College of Agriculture, and in 2021 began serving on the Penn State Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology DEI Committee. They received the Oregon State University' College of Agricultural Sciences Commitment to Diversity Award in 2021 for their ongoing commitment to social and cultural change within agriculture. Chelsea joined the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology at Penn State in Fall of 2021 as a PhD student trying to udnerstand how fungal endophyte communities establish. Their current project seeks to understand how endophyte community diversity in organic maize is associated with cover crop selection. 

Identity: transgender/ gender queer with low vision/ blindness, first generation college student from low income background